Digital Camera Photographer of the Year 2010

The Digital Camera Photographer of the Year competition is the leading contest for anyone with a passion for digital photography and is open to both amateur and professional photographers of any nationality. Organised by the UK's fastest-growing photography title, Digital Camera magazine, it aims to reveal the most inspirational and imaginative photographers from around the globe.

The overall winner will get the coveted £10,000 main prize and be declared Digital Camera Photographer of the Year 2010.

WILD NATURE WALLPAPERS

Iceland volcano cloud impact

As the ash cloud from Iceland's volcanic eruption continues to hover over the European skies, flights to and from Europe remained suspended.

The closing of European airspace has dealt a severe blow to the beleaguered airline industry. The crisis has cost the airlines at least $1 billion so far in lost revenue and could wipe out weaker carriers if it continues much longer, analysts say.

Scientists say that because the volcano is situated below a glacial ice cap, magma is being cooled quickly, causing explosions and plumes of grit that can be catastrophic to plane engines, depending on prevailing winds.

Seagull Flying

Top-10 Hubble Telescope's space photographs

Hubble Telescope's top ten greatest space photographs.


Awesome!!!



The Sombrero Galaxy - 28 million light years from Earth - was voted best picture taken by the Hubble telescope. The dimensions of the galaxy, officially called M104, are as spectacular as its appearance. It has 800 billion suns and is 50,000 light years across.




The Ant Nebula, a cloud of dust and gas whose technical name is Mz3, resembles an ant when observed using ground-based telescopes...

The nebula lies within our galaxy between 3,000 and 6,000 light years from Earth.





In third place is Nebula NGC 2392, called 'Eskimo' because it looks like a face surrounded by a furry hood. The hood is, in fact, a ring of comet-shaped objects flying away from a dying star. Eskimo is 5,000 light years from Earth.



At four is the Cat's Eye Nebula.



The Hourglass Nebula, 8,000 light years away, has a 'pinched-in- the-middle' look because the winds that shape it are weaker at the centre.




In sixth place is the Cone Nebula. The part pictured here is 2.5 light years in length (the equivalent of 23 million return trips to the Moon).


The Perfect Storm, a small region in the Swan Nebula, 5,500 light years away, described as 'a bubbly ocean of hydrogen and small amounts of oxygen, sulphur and other elements'.




Starry Night, so named because it reminded astronomers of the Van Gogh painting. It is a halo of light around a star in the Milky Way.




The glowering eyes from 114 million light years away are the swirling cores of two merging galaxies called NGC 2207 and IC 2163 in the distant Canis Major constellation.